Chapter 65: Black Fangs vs. Holy Church (4)
Chapter 65: Black Fangs vs. Holy Church (4)
“I understand the situation. I’ll gather the others and head there shortly.”
The man on the screen spoke those words.
Given the emergency, it was only natural that the entire leadership of the Holy Church would gather to discuss the next steps.
“Yes, I understand,” Caron replied with his usual, insincere smile before terminating the teleportation spell.
However, contrary to his words, Caron had no intention of waiting for them to arrive.
In a way, it was to be expected.
Even though they were both cardinals, Caron and that man were worlds apart.
Unlike the others, Caron was privy to the Holy Church’s deepest secret, shared with him by the now-vanished Pope.
The power he wielded and his abilities were incomparable to anyone else’s.
After all, Caron was the cardinal responsible for the most important empire, a position that granted him unparalleled authority within the Holy Church.
It wasn’t for nothing that people called him the next Pope.
‘If those fools come, they’ll only get in my way,’ he thought.
They were all hypocrites. Just by looking at that man, he could tell.
When power grows, corruption is inevitable. Caron knew this, and although he was aware of some of the things happening, he believed a solution was necessary.
Even if something is broken beyond repair, one should at least try to fix it.
‘Utterly disgusting,’ Caron thought with disdain.
Whether they were like that man, nurturing a field of flowers in their heads while feigning piety, or indulging in all kinds of corruption behind the scenes while pretending to be virtuous, the Holy Church was full of such vermin.
The latter group was at least somewhat reasonable, but...
Even they balked at the idea of grinding orphans to create a Holy Grail, an efficient method in Caron’s eyes.
He had once suggested it, only to be rejected outright—no matter how desperate the situation, they couldn’t bring themselves to commit such a sin, they said.
Caron knew this because they had refused, fearing divine punishment.
Fortunately, their immediate rejection allowed him to kill and silence them on the spot.
‘They’re all so frustratingly narrow-minded.’
One could obtain as much divine power as needed by using people.
These vermin hypocritically rejected the idea of using humans as resources.
But Caron was convinced—there was no more efficient material than humans.
That’s how he had risen to his current position. He had caught the eye of the Pope, who understood his methods, and was named as his successor.
However, this efficient approach was only possible within the empire.
Those hypocrites would surely reject this rational means of utilizing divine power.
As a result, Caron had to waste time ensuring thorough security for nothing.
The mass production of the Holy Grail could have been far more efficient, but it wasn’t.
‘Thanks to them, everything is becoming a hassle.’
It was already troublesome enough to deal with the leader of the Black Fangs, but now he had to clean up any evidence just because those idiots were coming.
First, Caron needed to quickly hand over the hero’s corpse to the Empire.
He had long-standing ties with the Second Prince, so it would be easy enough to ask him for a favor.
If he left it to that cunning emperor, he’d surely lose all ownership of the body. That prince was the perfect choice.
“...?”
Why was it?
Why did a sudden, uneasy feeling creep up on him?
A sense of foreboding washed over him, as if he was making the wrong choice.
But Caron was a rational man.
He wouldn’t abandon the most efficient plan just because of an unstable factor like intuition.
“...Ca-Cardinal! The preparations for the ritual are complete!”
Just as Caron was diligently cleaning up the evidence, a subordinate reported to him.
There were images and videos so disturbing that just thinking about them felt like his entire understanding of the world was crumbling.
The more he explored this mental landscape, the more bizarre and grotesque things he uncovered.
No matter how much he tried, Caron couldn’t make sense of the kind of mindset this person had or the life they had led.
But one thing was clear.
This man was definitely not the leader of the Black Fangs.
There was no way someone like this could be the leader of the Black Fangs.
It just wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
To think that such a subhuman...
No, something even less than human could be leading an organization that had pushed the Holy Church into a corner—Caron simply couldn’t accept it.
‘...How did this happen?’
Caron was thrown into confusion.
It was a mental world so bizarre, so grotesque, that it defied all logic.
Realizing the oddity of the situation and sensing the imminent threat to his sanity, Caron had swiftly returned from that place before his mind could be completely shattered.
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.
Tap, tap.
The man was indeed known as the leader of the Black Fangs.
He was a figure the Empire had put out a nationwide bounty on—so it would be stranger not to know him.
Yet, that man, didn’t resemble the leader of the Black Fangs at all.
If that’s the case... was it all just a mistake by the Empire?
Was everything they knew wrong?
Even though the Empire had devoted all its resources to the investigation, could all those imperial soldiers be making such a blunder?
‘Could that even be possible?’
How could a colossal force like the Empire confuse such a fool with the leader of the Black Fangs?
How could something so bizarre even happen?
But... looking at the current situation, there was no other explanation. There was no other way to make sense of it.
“Uh, uh, Cardinal...”
As Caron wrestled with his confusion, his oblivious subordinate kept trying to speak to him.
“I told you to shut up.”
He was losing control over his temper.
Once again, sharp words, stripped of any pretense, spilled from Caron’s lips.
But oddly, his subordinate didn’t obey his command.
“Uh, uh... Are you sure that’s okay?”
Already deeply unsettled, Caron’s frustration boiled over at his subordinate’s persistence. He was about to lash out at the man in front of him when...
He froze.
He had no choice but to stop.
His subordinate was trembling, pointing at something with a shaking hand.
When Caron followed the direction of the finger, he saw it—a shocking anomaly.
“What... what is this...?”
The most powerful relic in the possession of the Holy Church.
An object that had been passed down through centuries, perhaps millennia, along with the history of the Holy Church.
A treasure among treasures.
The miraculous spring had dwindled.
In just a short span of time, nearly half of the Holy Blood had evaporated.
The moment the history of the Holy Church had been halved in exchange for indulging in furry memes.
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